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A Separate Peace

Those interested in the history of abolition and racial equality would find few incidents in Lincoln’s presidency as dispiriting as the president’s Aug. 14, 1862, meeting with a delegation of five black men from Washington. It was dispiriting then as well: to the dismay of those hoping the Civil War would lead to full citizenship for African-Americans, Lincoln informed the delegation that “you and we are different races” and proposed that the five men be progenitors of a black colony the government would establish in Chiriquí, a region of what is now Panama.

Historians have debated Lincoln’s remarks and their context for decades. It was once conventional to claim that Lincoln’s proposal was an attempt to appease conservatives while he pursued the policy he truly believed in: a presidential proclamation of emancipation. But the more recent consensus is that Lincoln was speaking very much in character. The “Great Emancipator” was one of the many white Americans of the era who believed that if slavery were abolished, a “race war” would inevitably ensue. Since the United States was destined to be a white nation, emancipation must be accompanied by the emigration of freedpeople out of the United States.

For all the attention to Lincoln’s ideas and motivations, however, there has been very little focus on the delegates’ side of the story. For decades no one even knew who they were, much less what they stood for. Drawing on the work of the historian Benjamin Quarles, many believed that four of the five delegates were uneducated former slaves, hand-picked by Lincoln and his colonization commissioner, James Mitchell, to be pliable and subservient.

In fact, all five of the men who listened to Lincoln’s case for colonization were members of Washington’s free black elite, chosen by a formal meeting of representatives from Washington’s independent black churches. The delegation’s history – and more broadly, black Washingtonians’ responses to the variety of emigration proposals on offer in 1862 — reveal a vigorous and complex debate among African-Americans regarding their future in the United States.

In the spring and summer of 1862, Washington was the national hub for debate about black emigration, both within the United States government and among African-Americans themselves. Congress had appropriated $600,000 to support voluntary colonization of people freed by the D.C. Emancipation Act and continuing military operations. Lobbyists hoping to settle African-Americans in Liberia, Haiti and Central America converged on Washington to recruit emigrants and persuade the government that the appropriation should go to their pet projects.

African-Americans in Washington met the lobbyists and their Congressional allies with mixed responses. Among the newly freed slaves in Washington, some lived in miserable camps and were open to the idea of making their lives elsewhere. Henry McNeal Turner, a prominent minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, advocated a fair hearing for proponents of emigration and signed a petition asking Lincoln to choose Chiriquí as the location of a colony. Two other local A.M.E. ministers also expressed support for emigration in some form, and in June a ship left Alexandria, Va., for Haiti with about 150 emigrants on board.

Frederick Douglass was appalled by the support emigration agents seemed to be receiving among black Washingtonians, writing in his newspaper that even a small number of voluntary emigrants helped vindicate white colonizationists “who have made the ridding of the country of negroes, the object of long years of unwearied but vain exertion.”

Although Douglass was loath to acknowledge it, the prospect of leaving the United States had always appealed to a subset of black Americans, especially at moments when their future in the United States seemed particularly bleak — for example, after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. In the summer of 1862, it was difficult to tell which way the wind was blowing. The president had decided to issue an emancipation proclamation, but only his closest circle knew about it. The war was eroding slavery, but who was to say what the ultimate outcome would be?

Late July witnessed an outpouring of animosity toward colonization agents in Washington. It began when John D. Johnson, one of three Liberian “commissioners” then touring the United States, was said to have voiced support for forced — not voluntary — colonization in Liberia and declared that newly freed slaves required the supervision of “the superior race.” Johnson was black, but his comments smacked of the racism and coercion many Africans-Americans associated with the American Colonization Society, a white-led group whose members had founded Liberia decades earlier as a colony for American ex-slaves.

The members of the Social Civil and Statistical Association, a black civic association, decided that Johnson was no longer welcome in town. Hours after the group asked Johnson to leave, two of its members instigated a fight with him and were arrested. Rumors flew that the Haitian colonization agents would be banished next, and a group of young men confronted an African-American agent of Central American colonization at his hotel and sent him packing. The S.C.S.A. had not intended a blanket condemnation of black emigration, one of its supporters later commented. It was fighting only “the machinations and schemes of the old Colonization Society and their leaders and abettors.”

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It was in this climate of debate and suspicion that representatives of several of Washington’s black churches convened in Union Bethel A.M.E. Church to hear from the president’s assistant, James Mitchell.

When Mitchell informed them that the president wished to speak to a black delegation about government-sponsored colonization, the response was chilly. According to a reporter who was there, attendees discussed “to a great length” the president’s intentions and the implications of sending representatives. They ultimately decided to send a delegation, but not before they passed two resolutions expressing grave doubts about the entire enterprise. The first stated that it was “inexpedient, inauspicious, and impolitic” to support emigration; the second expressed skepticism that delegates chosen at that meeting could represent “the interests of over four-and-a-half millions of our race.”

Who were the men who reluctantly convened with Lincoln that day? Edward Thomas, who became the delegation’s chairman, was a messenger in the House of Representatives and renowned for his collections of fine art, coins and books. John F. Cook Jr., who also became a delegate, was the son of the city’s most prominent black minister; he had attended college in the North and was a respected teacher. Both Cook and Thomas, as well as another delegate — Cornelius Clark — were active in the S.C.S.A., whose main purpose was racial uplift, or “to improve our condition by use of all proper means calculated to exalt our people.” The other two delegates, Benjamin McCoy and John T. Costin, were, respectively, a leader in religion and education and a scion of one of Washington’s most illustrious black families.

Lincoln might not have known of the resolutions that immediately preceded his meeting with the delegation, but he clearly understood that these were men of considerable stature. In his address, the president acknowledged that the delegates were “intelligent colored men” and that they probably had “long been free.” He urged them to emigrate not for their own well-being, but to help “those who are not so fortunate as yourselves.” In fact, Lincoln may have heard something of these men from the lead servant in the White House, William Slade, who as president of the S.C.S.A. would have known at least three of them well.

When Lincoln ended his speech, the delegates promised to give a response soon. Newspapers immediately published Lincoln’s remarks, giving rise to a storm of criticism from black and white abolitionists.

In Washington, however, African Americans’ reaction was neither simple nor unified. Two days after the meeting, Edward Thomas, the chairman of the delegation, informed Lincoln that he had changed his mind and that he was interested in pursuing emigration to Chiriquí. As plans for a government-sponsored voyage got under way, one of Frederick Douglass’s sons sought to join the expedition. Hundreds of African-Americans from the Washington area volunteered to go, hoping to rebuild their lives far outside the ambit of slaveowners and the United States government. Many sold their belongings and moved out of their homes in preparation for the trip.

Unfortunately, they were caught up in dynamics much larger than themselves. The government voyage was delayed and finally canceled because of resistance from Central American governments. The stranded migrants wrote Lincoln that they faced destitution in the coming winter and lamented that he would “create hopes within us, and stimulate us to struggle for national independence and respectable quality” only to abandon them. They sought a meeting; Lincoln, through a secretary, asked them to be patient.

Black leaders like Frederick Douglass, who insisted that African-Americans put their faith in the United States — and who demanded that the government see black men as soldiers and African-Americans as citizens — are the ones whose rhetoric fits most easily into our national narratives of inclusion and multiculturalism. But it is well to remember, also, how many white Americans rejected the idea of a multiracial nation and how many black Americans, recognizing the implications of that rejection, took steps to build their lives elsewhere.

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